Hervé Youmbi and Conclusion: Artists Commissioning Artists

Collaborations: Cameroon

Within the field of African arts (if there can be said to be such a thing), few if any exhibitions or publications have detailed the laborious and convoluted process of commissioning masquerade ensembles, whether for research, performative, or museum purposes. As the concluding chapter of Vibrant Virtuosities, a selection of Cameroonian artist Hervé Youmbi’s works will extoll upon the virtues and vices of being not only someone who commissions masks, but an artist working with other artists on the continent, his choices as a conversation with them, and how Western patronage, economics, and technology does or does not drive this.